10 Amazing Images by Mary Blair

Mary Blair was a master of color, certainly, but she was no less gifted in her ability to convey atmosphere. She applied impressive tonality and texture with pastels and created conceptual hallmarks during the golden age of animation with her work on Disney's Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland.

In celebration of 100 years since her birth on October 21st, 1911, here are 10 amazing images by Mary Blair that have left a lasting impression on me over the years and contributed to my own development as an artist:

Georgia O'Keeffe Museum & Ghost Ranch

I had the privilege of visiting the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum and seeing the O'Keeffiana: Art and Art Materials exhibit recently. The museum is situated in downtown Santa Fe, which I must say has excellent weather this time of year.





Seeing O'Keeffe's art materials in person is a strange experience. Here are these things - mostly pastels and oil stored humbly in her husband's tackle box and other modest containers; nothing abnormally special - and in this rudimentary form they created some of the most beautiful and notable art of the American Southwest.



I also got to visit the famous Ghost Ranch, where O'Keeffe lived and worked for nearly fifty years.



It is easy to see why she loved this environment. One characteristic of O'Keeffe's paintings was that she oftentimes focused on small portions of a subject, magnifying it to epic proportions. I don't believe the motive for this approach can be fully realized without visiting the territory in person. Ghost Ranch is a place that not only looks big, but feels big. Overwhelmingly big. The features themselves are not what create this feeling so much as the contrast of said features against their inactive and comparatively dead surroundings.



Georgia O'Keeffe's home/studio at Ghost Ranch still has her ladder propped up against its adobe walls. It is said that whenever she would have guests, they would always be made to climb up the ladder onto the roof where they would talk and take in the view. The ladder also made an appearance in her 1958 painting, Ladder to the Moon.



I highly recommend touring both the Georgia O'Keeffe museum in Santa Fe and Ghost Ranch in Abiquiu.

27 Cool Header Designs

Some of these are unique, others are trendy, but you can't argue that most all are eye-catching and do a bit more for their content than the average header. Personally I have always been more of a minimalist, but some of these are very inspiring!


See all 27 headers here.

60 Photos Celebrating the Colors of the Rainbow

Via Inspiks comes an inspiring collection of 60 photos, all of which celebrate the colors of the rainbow.


See the full collection here.

The Complete Famous Artist Course (1960)

Someone has scanned every page of this highly informative series from 1960 and hosted it online [in PDF format] for free! Gotta' love the interwebs. I highly recommend it to anyone seriously interested in an art career.

Update - 1/8/10: Seems the files are no longer available...